I really thought I was keeping the Toronto pre-release show pretty simple. And I believed this right up to a few days before showtime. Although I probably should have known better as I left my apartment in Ottawa.

It's schleptacular!

What I should have known was that I had to coordinate the set up of a rental P.A. system, a slideshow intro for two performers, that two out-of-town couples were well taken care of, three never-before-used stomp boxes, lighting logistics, a constantly changing guestlist and of course, the worst weather(or weather warning) of the season. Add to this the fact that I was trying to deal with these details with a shirt, tie, sweater and fitted faux-leather bomber jacket on, and it was quite the ordeal. Albeit a very fashion forward ordeal.

So what began as a musical extravaganza featuring a few bells and whistles became The Bells and Whistles Super Stress Show, featuring a bit of music. But that’s okay because the music served an oasis of calm in the middle of gigzilla. I was hardly nervous at all and yes, technical glitches did occur but I tried and hope I succeeded in moving past all of it with professionalism to deliver an entertaining show.

It was fun to be a headliner for the first time and to have a class-act like Kristine St-Pierre be my opening special guest. It was also fun to call her up during the encores à la George and Elton in “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me.” Also, the beauty and uniqueness of the venue helped distract the audience from, oh, say, daisy chained pedals disconnecting from each other in mid-air and crashing to the unforgiving floor with the even more unforgiving PA system amplifying the cacophony as if to say “Hey Blue, maybe plan a little better next time, yeah?”

Nonetheless, the things people actually said to me at the end of the night was just all kinds of nice and made me feel like it was all worthwhile. And you know what? It was. Even if the grand piano’s supports had given out and crushed my legs and carefully colour-coordinated pants, it would have been worth it. Because having your own professionally produced debut CD, releasing it in your hometown to attentive, close friends and family and hearing their words of praise, encouragement and support can only make you strive onwards and upwards.

Thank you attendees. It was my humble honour to share some music with you for an evening. We’ll do it again. Soon.

So my studio time has ended. We didn’t quite finish everything up so I’m going to have to go back in to record one last track. Then comes the editing, mixing, mastering and the most important part: running the entire record through the T-Pain Super AutoTune 5000™.

But I can tell you the tracks that we recorded, thus officially revealing the tracklist for The Learning Days:

Going to take a little travel hiatus but it’s going to be nothing but The Learning Days, The Learning Days, The Learning Days once I’m back and hopefully the record will be finished just in time to cheer y’all out of the winter blues(…or drive you deeper into them, depending on which tracks you listen to).

I’m a songwriter. I’m not a guitarist, I’m not a drummer, I’m not a keyboardist, I’m not a bassist.

The good news: As I head into the studio in September there are such things as “session musicians” who will play all those instruments for you on your record!

The bad news: I’m too cheap to pay for session musicians.

But that’s actually still good news because I’m something of a multi-instrumentalist which means I’m familiar with the mechanics of several instruments despite sucking at them individually. The good news being, for the tracks that will have a fuller production I’ll be forced to come up with creative ways to record these instruments without betraying the fact that I’m actually quite lousy at them. And the way I’ll do this is to use them in non-traditional ways(i.e. cheat) that can only give the songs a fresher, unique, less-is-more feel to them…

So it’s win-win: I save money and you, the potential listener, will get a feast for your ears! But be forewarned for what you’re in for…I emailed my producer today asking if his studio had an accordion, melodica or Moog I could tinker with…which should be extra interesting seeing as I don’t know what a Moog is…

So I’m rushing this post out so that Technorati.com can verify the following code: 2T6EWHYJTWW5. Did you get that Technorati robot blog crawler? I said 2T6EWHYJTWW5.

Moving right along…

Of all the songs I’ve written, there are about 40 songs that would be album-worthy. The rest…well let’s say I’ve written my share of songs that were all kinds of suck. Probably worth putting on display as cautionary tales as to why you don’t want to short-change the songwriting process. But of the 40 keepers, the challenge I now face is which ones I’ll include on my first album(probably 10 or so).

Without knowing it, many of you have already helped me in this task. Etched in my brain(read:ego) are the many positive comments people have made on my songs. Whether polite offhand congratulations or soul-baring cockle-touchers, these comments give me a good idea of which songs pack the goods. So I already do have something of a shortlist.

From there I’ll need to figure out if any of the songs just don’t belong thematically or musically. Whenever I would prepare a setlist for a live show I’d always try to have a nice, smooth musical trajectory so that the audience is taken on a musical journey rather than yanked from one song to another. Same with the tracklist…need to make sure they all fit together both as a whole and as a sequence.

Have you ever watched those deleted scenes with the directory’s commentary on a DVD and they’re like “I really loved this scene but I had to cut it for the sake of the pacing”? My next thought is usually “man, how do I turn off this pretentious jackass’ commentary?” but now I kinda understand it. I already know I won’t be putting in some songs on this record that I’d really love to record. I’ll reveal the final tracklist once it’s finalized but for now I’ll end this pretentious jackass commentary with a few tracks that won’t be making the cut…or will they?

…or to use the correct terminology I recently learned: “making my first record”. Which is weird, because I will be essentially recording my first CD. Regardless, allow me formally announce it:

Dear friends, in the next few months I will be making my first record. Although I am still very much an independent artist, my intention is to do this in as professional a manner as I am able. I have spoken to a local Ottawa producer, Dean Watson, who is well respected, connected and has a good track record and we have agreed to proceed with this project in the September time-frame. I have budgeted a significant amount of money for the entire initiative and even if this record turns out to go nowhere, I feel a need to do this now and to do it seriously and to do it right. And so, I am going to do it.

I’ve tried to be pretty low key in the past about pushing all things Blue Blue Satellite(that’s my stage name, for the uninitiated) but as part of my commitment to doing this project right, alas, I’m going to have to step up the self-promotion. I promise I won’t just cram it down your throats and be like “buy my CD, buy my CD, buy my CD, buy my CD, buy my CD.” I will try to offer something engaging and insightful that will hopefully keep you rockin’ along with me as I strike out on this endeavour.

I know I’m making a big deal out of this. And I know that most of you probably know people who have put out records of their own so it’s kinda like: “meh”. Still, I hope you’ll be willing to share in my excitement and be interested in joining me as I take this little journey. Or rather “continue this journey”…a journey many of you have been on at the important moments so please stick with me a little longer…at least until I can garner more than dozen YouTube hits.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with cover songs. As a songwriter I feel that original songs is where the artistry lies. As a performer it’s fun to do covers but I always felt like a bit of a cop out because it’s an easy way to engage an audience without earning it. Unless, like me, you like to screw with your audience by doing really obscure covers.

Then there’s YouTube where a cute girl or two will do an acoustic cover of some pop-song-du-jour and garner over a million views. Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-qoFPINCc. Meanwhile my original songs languish in an obscurity deeper than the covers I perform.

But in this whole equation there was one thing I never considered: What happens if someone were to cover a song of mine? Surely in that case I’d flip-flop and sing the praises of doing covers? Well, normally no…I’d easily avoid the embarrassment of flip-flopping because the notion of someone covering me seemed laughable. I mean, I can’t even employ the sentence “My YouTube views are in the ___’s” because I haven’t even cracked 10 is some cases. So just by the numbers alone, who would cover me?

But alas, 10 years of dipping my toes in the Toronto indie music scene must’ve put a black ball of cynicism in my being because I didn’t realize what a generous, kind, supportive, solidary and talented singer/songwriter scene I’ve joined since moving to Ottawa. A scene where Chrysalis, a free Ottawa-artists-covering-other-Ottawa-artists show could be put on, where TWO artists would end up covering songs of mine.

There’s a little known human emotion called elevation that is described as: “A mental ‘reset button’, wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.”* Chrysalis was a beautiful, uplifting evening that moved everyone present. It was telling that there were zero Alanis Morissette covers and only one Paul Anka and one Kathleen Edwards cover….and yet 2 Blue Blue Satellite covers. Blows my mind…the singer/songwriter community here in Ottawa is THAT supportive, close, respectful and humble.

I’ll admit, when I first signed up, I didn’t “get it”. To cover an Ottawa artist seemed restrictive for the performer and the audience. But last weekend really opened my eyes. The point wasn’t to do a cover of Sweet Home Alabama and have the audience rock along with you. The point was to nurture and demonstrate the wealth of talent in this city with the spirit of community driving it all. I’d take that any day over a million YouTube views.

I’ve been trying to push the envelope of my songwriting lately because I find I have a songwriting comfort zone: melancholy tunes using a Travis fingerstyle guitar picking folk technique. So to shake myself out of this wordy safe zone, I’ve been trying new things, new styles, new themes, new techniques. Unlike most musicians these days I don’t know how to auto-tune or else I’d probably try that.

One new challenge is something some local Ottawa folk singer/songwriters have organized for 19 years now called the Great Canadian Song Along. Basically they give you a topic and you write a new song on it. It’s like a school assignment. With a lot less research, but equal opportunities for plagiarism.

Shortly after I made my mind up to participate in the Song Along, the unexpected thunderbolt of inspiration hit and I churned out the song over 3 days. And with no false modestly…it’s a gem! I’m especially proud of this one because it’s pure Blue Blue Satellite; I can’t detect any of my influences figuring predominantly in the songwriting. The chord progression is similar to Jewel’s “Amen”…uh, in fact, it’s the exact same chord progression, but despite this, I think the song stands quite capably on its own.

It’s ironic though. I signed up for this Song Along to push the envelope of my songwriting and ended up writing…you guessed it…a melancholy tune using a Travis fingerstyle guitar picking folk technique*. But it’s a helluva tune.

Haven’t had a chance to produce the song yet, but here’s me performing it at the Song Along minus the showstopping loop pedal finale that was stymied due to technical difficulties:

Let me tell you a story. A story of torturous decisions, of trying circumstances, of struggling against the odds….a story of…..heavy metal.

About a year ago I had a couple of days of vacation booked to go down to Sacramento to see Metallica live. Yes, Metallica. Literally hours before my flight, some s*** hit the fan at work. And when you’re on a Marketing team with limited resources, when s*** hits the fan, the scatological blast radius is all-encompassing. As evening wore into night(and as my early flight time loomed), the possibility that I’d have to cancel the trip and miss the concert became probability. It’s a good thing that the office was empty around midnight because I would have been bad company given the dark mood I was in.

After much agonizing though, I decided to go, dealing with the consequences as they came. And come they did as the situation worsened as I learned over costly long distance calls and text messages. By the time I got to Sacramento, I was out of my dark mood…and in a much dimmer, deeper, danker and dangerous one.

And then….the concert.

There is a holy moment when music connects with you. Really. Just. Connects. And like the alignment of the cosmos in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metallica, for one night only, was my Monolith. Being 28-year veteran Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, the band’s mastery of their technique and live show was something to behold. All the stress and tension from work didn’t just melt away but was lit on fire and cooked extra crispy in a hail of stage pyrotechnics and 115dB guitar shred. Never have I screamed along word-for-word and pumped my fist in the air with such reckless, furious abandonment than at this show.

I’ve been to a lot of concerts and many have been memorable spectacles in my life, but this concert, well this time…it was personal. And the frustration I was feeling from the “real world” took a back seat for a couple of hours as a monumental exercise in the power of music played out within me.

So the stigma of metal be damned. Or any type of music for that matter. I hope you’ve had or will one day have an experience similar to mine whether it be from a Metallica show, or a Justin Beiber show. Although it’d probably take another Metallica conert to allow me to vent the complications of attending a Beiber show…

It’s easy to become intimidated as a singer/songwriter; especially amongst other musicians. This one plays better guitar, that one has great vocal control, this one can name drop all sorts of obscure influences, that one has a handful of albums to their name. Well, I can claim none of these things. So how, pray-tell, do I not fold like a clean sheet of Hammermill whenever I take the stage at a gig or especially at an open mic where an underlying current of competition always festers? Well you have to realize one thing: every singer/songwriter writes pop music. I don’t care if you’re Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan or John Lennon…your bread and butter is the 3-5 minute song that will involve, at its core, four instruments.

Here’s the key: Rob, Bob and John-o are lucky, ‘cos if Mozart were here, he’d own all their asses.

You see, I was raised on Classical music. Now THOSE were musicians. When you’re writing operas and symphonies and concertos that can be hours long and you’re writing these for full orchestra, by hand, all by yourself…now *that’s* talent. Mozart had more talent in his pinky finger than Dylan, Johnson and Lennon combined. And I respect the hell out of those guys. You take the most legendary pop artist and compare them with the least of the Classical composers, and from a songwriting point of view, you’ve got yourself a fight between Mike Tyson and that weasely kid from Superbad.

So if you ever meet a songwriter who’s trying throw his weight around, just hand him a stack of manuscript paper and ask him to write you a three movement symphony for a 100-piece orchestra. It’s all relative…think of it in those terms and you’ve got for yourself a nice, level playing field.

Blue Blue Satellite

Concept album update:Well, I think I’ve locked down the concept and even the basic story. I’ve even sort of sketched out the story arc and how many songs it’ll take to tell it. I’m hopefully going to start writing the first song soon…but I realized that if this Concept Album is going to happen, it’s not going to happen for awhile because writing 8 or 9 songs is no small task. Stay tuned.

I was watching a film by Hideo Miyazaki, the Japanese animation master whose genius movies always fill me with awe and a deep, deep, sense of burning jealousy. Petty envy aside, his process is one of months, if not years. Meetings, storyboards, screen tests, and of course, pages of pages of painstaking frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation and still, in the end, a soul-stirring finished product. This kind of discipline astounds me…but it it inspires me too. And so, the question du jour:

If my best songwriting comes from short bursts of inspiration, how can I apply the epic scope of moviemaking to it?

This is not a rhetorical question. There is an answer. And I have the answer. And the answer comes in two words: Rock Opera. Or perhaps a different two words: Concept Album. Or if you like efficiency, one word: Musical.

All similar terms to describe the answer and the next Blue Blue Satellite challenge(for me, not you). Although “concept album” would be a bit of a misnomer seeing as I don’t even have a regular album to my name. And come to think of it, even “rock opera” doesn’t fit because I sing folk.

Oh well, call it what you will, I’m going to take up the challenge to express with thematically related songs a story with definite plot points, character arcs and, considering my inexperience as well as my laziness, deus ex machina after deus ex machina!

So, I won’t give myself a timeline. It’ll give me something to work on indefinitely rather than bore you guys with yet another song about unrequited love…unless of course, it was all just a dream.